


The Tale of Toph & Bakugou

by grilledsquids



Series: Toph Punches Harder than You [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beach Episode, F/M, Friendship, Meet-Cute, Romance, alt-alt universe to be precise, bakugou pov, how many nicknames can i give Bakugou in one conversation?, just a lil summer love story, ooc bakugou because he’s a SIMP in this one, they fight two and a half times in 4K words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27997812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grilledsquids/pseuds/grilledsquids
Summary: A step to the side, in some other flow of time... Katsuki Bakugou meets Toph a little earlier, a little differently.
Relationships: Bakugou Katsuki/Toph Beifong
Series: Toph Punches Harder than You [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050569
Comments: 23
Kudos: 104





	The Tale of Toph & Bakugou

It starts on sandy earth, with saltwater spray in the air. The sun beats down on his shoulders, a prickly heat that would burn any other boy his age, but not Katsuki. Katsuki is special, he was born tougher and smarter and stronger than anyone else. And he’s resistant to burns, he just tans and tans until he’s brown as a nut, never lobster-red or freckled like Deku. Mom says he can skip the sunscreen, so _ha!_ He’s stronger than the sun. 

His friends aren’t so special, and usually they’re still cool enough to hang out with, but—no, today they’re losers, splashing around like babies in the salty ocean water. 

Katsuki likes the beach, but—water is _stupid_. 

It has nothing to do with how weak he is in ocean, nothing to do with how his quirk just washes away into nothing and he’s not skilled enough to build up the sweat to overcome this yet—

No. The ocean is just boring. It’s for kiddies. Katsuki turns his attention elsewhere, away from the sight and sounds of squealing boys. 

Instead, he sets his gaze on the breakwater at the edge of the public beach, and the tide pools that sit comfortably away from the rougher waves. He’s been to this beach several times, and somehow the pools always looked completely different, filled with different life each time and just begging to be explored. And there’s water there, yeah, but it’s way cooler than paddling along in the surf. Here, he doesn’t have to get that wet if he doesn’t feel like it. 

He stops at the edge of the sand, skinny hands braced against his hips as he inspects the dark, jagged rocks piled up ahead. Good, it’s low tide. Katsuki glances back across the dunes, the umbrellas and blankets of beach-goers left behind as colorful dots on the sand. He trudges onward, clambering up the sandy, slippery rocks.

It’s quieter here, without all the overlapping sounds of other people. Just the slosh of waves, the bubbling echo of water as it fills the treacherous crevices between dark boulders. 

He remembers tumbling down different rocks, misstepping on loose earth and landing in a stream—

Katsuki climbs carefully. He’s thirteen now. He can climb and hike and run and he’ll _never fall again_. 

With this thought, Katsuki drags himself up fiercely, and as he crests the top of the rock he’s greeted by a scrawny girl in shorts and a baggy t-shirt, crouched by a large tide pool. 

His elation is quickly shuttered away, replaced by a scowl at the stranger. “Tch,” Katsuki pulls himself fully onto the rock, rolling to his feet so that he’s towering over the girl from high ground.

She doesn’t quite look at him, but her head tilts in his direction, face shielded by a curtain of too-long bangs. “...Hi,” the girl says tentatively.

 _“Hey,”_ Katsuki spits back, dry as the desert. “Beat it. You’ll scare off all the fish.” 

He forgoes his usual sparking display of power, figuring there’s no need when it’s just one willowy little girl to shoo off. It has nothing to do with the uncomfortable touch of saltwater on his hands, damp from climbing to the pools. 

But the girl juts out her chin, defiant. “I’m not going anywhere,” she huffs, pulling her hands from the water to lay them, palm-down on the rocks. “You don’t own the beach.”

“Neither do _you,”_ Katsuki can’t help but snap, hopping down onto the same plateau of rock that she sits on. 

The girl rolls her eyes, her whole torso slouching backwards as she looks away. 

Her black hair is damp and tangled up in a sloppy hair tie, plastered to rounded cheeks. Her arms are crusted with salt and sand. The neck of her shirt is stretched too large, and he can see sun-burnt shoulders and the straps of a green bikini top beneath it. Without meaning to, his eyes slip lower, down to her legs, which are sandy and flushed from the sunlight, streaked with sunscreen, but also toned and smooth and dripping with water… 

Katsuki is thirteen, and he’s not interested in girls but he’s not _uninterested_ either. 

He mostly steers clear of girls at school, unless they’re trying to beat his test scores or someone’s talking about one of them in the locker room. They’re not that great, overall, because girls are mostly squeamish or screechy or horribly, alarmingly observant for teenagers. 

And some are nice to look at, like this one, so he’ll look at them, because of course he _notices—_

The girl begins to turn her face towards him and Katsuki rips his gaze away—

“—ame, anyway?” 

By the nonchalance in her tone, she didn’t notice anything. Katsuki crosses his arms, risking a peek at her. Her head is aimed down, towards the rippling surface of the pools. But then she frowns, and tips her face at him expectantly.

“What?” Katsuki says blankly.

Her brow furrows. “I asked what your name is,” she repeats. “I’m Toph, by the way.”

He stares at her a bit longer, noticing her eyes now. They’re a little weird, misty green with no pupils. “I’m Katsuki,” he replies, and then he grimaces and corrects himself. “ _Bakugou_. Katsuki _Bakugou_.”

He doesn’t go by Katsuki, he’s practically an adult now and so he’s _Bakugou_ —he can’t let random girls think they can be overly familiar and call him _Katsuki_ —

“What’s your full name?” Katsuki presses, stomping towards her and settling himself at the edge of the water, leaving a few feet of clear tidepool and rocky shore between them. “And what’s a _‘Ta-phu’?_ Is that Chinese or something?” 

She pauses, delicate eyebrows raised. “Yeah, it is,” she confirms, appreciative. Katsuki smirks, and then he quickly drops his head to the tide pool, reaching into the cool water to scrounge for a snail shell. 

“It’s pronounced _Toph,”_ the girl repeats clearly. “And my surname is… um. I just got adopted,” she admits in an odd tone. “So I’m still deciding if I’ll change it or not. I just go by Toph anyway.”

“...Well shit, _Toph,_ I didn’t ask for your whole life story,” Katsuki grumbles, caught off-guard by her honesty. She chuckles unexpectedly, unoffended. He glances back at her, meeting glassy irises—“Your eyes are weird, is that your quirk?”

Toph blinks again. “Another part of my life story,” she shrugs. “I’m—“ her face pulls into a scowl. _“Legally,_ I’m blind. Even though my quirk totally counteracts it.”

Blind? Really? But Katsuki immediately suspects that she can’t be that helpless. What kind of adoptive parent would let a blind girl wander off on the beach? 

Katsuki drags a hermit crab from the underside of a ledge, setting it down between them. “Can you see this?” He tests.

“Yep,” Toph confirms, stretching out a hand to touch the crab’s shell. It startles and goes still. “My quirk gives me a whole extra sense. What’s your quirk, Katsuki?”

 _“Bakugou,”_ he corrects her sharply. She shoots him a puzzled look. “And my quirk is Explosion,” he holds up his hand, the dryer one, and ignites it with small, crackling pops. 

Her face splits into a bright grin, her ear tilted towards the noise. “Ha! You blow shit up? That’s awesome, dude.”

“Yeah,” Katsuki smirks. “It _looks_ even cooler.”

And if there’s an edge of superiority to his tone, a hint of a taunt—Toph is entirely immune to it. 

“Oh save it, Blasty,” she rolls her eyes again. “Like I haven’t heard that joke a thousand times. But y’know what’s cooler than explosions?” 

_Blasty_. Katsuki narrows his eyes at her, wondering what she’d do if he shoved her into the tide pool. Yeah, yeah, she was a poor blind orphan, but if she was bold enough to scoff at his quirk, she ought to know the consequences. And it wouldn’t hurt, much, since the pool was shallow but filled with rocks. 

“What?” He asks, watching her closely. 

_“Earthbending,”_ she beams, and slams a palm onto the earth. The ground quakes under his knees, and from behind him there’s a loud, rumbling crack from the rocks. 

Katsuki turns, and sees two halves of a boulder tumble apart, pushing against the sand and water that surrounds it.

“That’s _my_ quirk,” Toph says proudly, leaning over to poke at the hermit crab some more. “Cool, huh?”

He looks back at the girl, so dainty and unassuming, and a thrill of fury and reluctant awe runs through Katsuki’s chest. There’s a question on the tip of his tongue, a demand, a challenge waiting to be thrown her way. He wants to fight, see how her earth will match up against his blasts—he could beat her, definitely, he can already think up a dozen ways to best her—

“Not as cool as explosions,” he points out, letting the notions of a challenge ooze into his tone since she won’t see his sneer. “I could just blast it all away, no matter what you threw at me.”

She snorts, dipping her hands back into the water to wash off sand. “What, right here, right now? What happens if I toss you into the ocean, eh? I betcha can’t ignite anything in water.” She muses playfully, and while there’s a scowl on his lips there’s nothing but a smile on hers.

Katsuki pushes down the spike of anxiety that shoots through him at the thought of getting shoved into the ocean. 

“I could shove you in first,” Katsuki suggests darkly, shifting into a crouch and angling himself towards her. “You’d bash your head in if I pushed you toward the ocean, but how about one of these pools?” He says thoughtfully, voicing his earlier plan. 

She shifts in response, expression going sharp. “You’d regret it. I can sense you coming,” Toph quips back, but she’s wary and rigid now. 

“Doesn’t mean you can _stop_ me.”

“With every action,” she says with eerie solemnity, “There is a _reaction.”_

“Is that so?” He taunts, eyes flashing at the sudden edge he’s found over her. “It’s written all over your face,” he cackles, leaning back. “You’re _scared.”_

“I’m not,” she denies vehemently, and instead of ducking her face she glares right at him. “You think I don’t wanna beat you to pulp? I could, and I’d _bury your bod_ y afterwards, too!” She snaps, fingers digging into the sandy ground. “We’re all alone out here, _Katsuki_ —no one’d suspect it from a little blind girl!”

Katsuki laughs again, raspy and loud. “You’re all talk, _Dead-Eyes_ , but I’m not!” He lifts himself up onto his knees, heart blazing with excitement. “Maybe I won’t blast you out into the water, but what’s a couple more burns on top of that sunburn?” 

Her face contorts in rage, and she snarls, “Try me, Blasty!”

He lunges for her shoulders, hands crackling. 

She twists, uncaring of the prickling heat, setting one warm hand on his bare chest and the other on his forearm and—why is her leg hooked over him, why is she leaning into him like that—?

And then, to Katsuki’s horror— _she hurls them both over the rock ledge_.

They tumble—this is bad, he can’t brace himself—

He hears her gasp of pain as she hits the ground first—water rushes in, slapping his face—

Katsuki lands on Toph, bony and warm, and then she heaves him onto his back and he smacks against cold, sopping wet sand. 

Katsuki splutters, heart beating a wild rhythm in his chest, eyes stinging with water—

With a war cry, the girl slaps a handful of wet sand into his face. Water gushes over them again. 

“BLEAAAERGH!” He jerks away, coughing, spitting up sand as his eyes tear up from the saltwater. “You _bitch!”_

“I _warned_ —you, stupid—!” Her voice cuts off with a shriek of surprise as the tide smacks at them, and Katsuki takes a moment to sluice the sand off his face, scrubbing and spitting. He straightens up at last, dripping and shivering in the shade of the breakwater.

“You could’ve _killed us!”_ Katsuki howls, falling back on his ass as the water pushes and pulls at them. He squints around, quickly taking in the pocket of flat, muddy sand they landed in. It’s a straight drop from the ledge they’d been sitting on, and not nearly as far down as he’d feared.

Katsuki figures it out just as the girl retorts, “I knew—wh-what I was doing—“ she gasps for breath, he must’ve knocked the wind out of her, “I made _sure_ to land on sand!” She insists, waving her hand around for emphasis. 

He spits again, furious at perpetual taste and feel of grit on his tongue. “That was still stupid!” Katsuki snarls, face flushing with color. 

“That was stupid? What about attacking me with _explosions,_ huh?!” She demands, rubbing her raw, pink shoulder. She pauses, feeling around the new holes in her clothes. “You ruined my shirt!” 

“You’re being a pussy!” Katsuki shouts back.

But he has, indeed, ruined her shirt. It was already old and stretched out, but now it had a bunch of holes too, and as he watches, Toph puts her fingers through it and tears it off in one easy swipe. “Am I?!” She hollers, and then she pitches the torn shirt straight at his face like a psychopath.

Katsuki bats the shirt aside, flushing. “Quit whining, it was an ugly shirt anyway!” 

She responds with an inarticulate shout of rage, shoving herself onto wobbly feet. “That’s why I gave it to you! _Ugly shirt_ for an _ugly guy!”_

“Wha—you’re _blind!”_

“Thank _goodness_ for that!” 

“That’s stupid, you’re so _stupid—!”_ And his hands are too wet now for explosions, but he’s so frustrated, he just tackles her to the ground with no plan but to _shut her up._

She screeches her defiance, getting her knee up against his torso to push him back. He snags her ankle, dragging her down as another wave floods their tiny sand arena. 

The girl almost chokes on seawater, looking panicked, but still manages to hook her elbow over his other knee and they’re really tangled now, the only barrier between their skin is sand and saltwater. And she smells like sweat and sunscreen and something definitively girly but not anything he can put a name too—Katsuki’s next move falters when he realizes all this—

A skinny arm lashes under his armpit and over his shoulder in some kind of chokehold. Katsuki bucks against her, knowing he could throw her off without even blasting her in the face—but then Toph’s leg coils over his hip and her chest flattens against his bare back and they’re wet, practically suctioned against each other—and this isn’t some schoolyard fight, this isn’t Deku, this is a _girl_ with toned legs and soft curves and venom on her tongue—

And Katsuki is thirteen and new to these thoughts, and—

They’re alone, and she’s so _close—_

And she’s freaking _strong_ —ow, shit, he really can’t _breathe—!_

He slaps against her arm, tapping out, and as soon as her arms and legs loosen Katsuki flings himself away, gasping on all fours. 

“Had enough?” Toph cackles, all bright and airy; oblivious to the haunted, hateful, hungered look Katsuki shoots at her. “Rookie mistake, not fighting a triangle hold!”

“You’re _nothing_ , Earth Girl,” he croaks out automatically, wondering why the hell a blind girl knows wrestling moves. “I could incinerate you if I felt like it.”

He doesn’t mean it; doesn’t even bother to put any force behind his words. Katsuki barely knows what he’s saying, because he’s raking his eyes over her as he speaks, shamelessly, thoroughly. Who cares? It’s not like there’s anyone to see him. There’s no rule against looking. 

“You’re all talk, Sparky,” she says, parroting his words, grinning like mad as she draws herself to her feet. She sloshes through the sandy water, brazen and uncaring, and thrusts a hand at him. 

He stares at her, dumbfounded. It’s not like Deku, at the stream all those years ago. Not at all. 

“Get _up_ , what’re you _waiting_ for?” The girl huffs, and before Katsuki can think to slap her hand away or stand up on his own, she’s grabbing him, too close and overly familiar, tugging him up by the bicep. 

“I don’t need any help—!” He shrugs off her hand, heart thumping wildly. “You’re a _freak_ , y’know that?” He snaps reflexively. 

Toph sticks out her tongue, unfazed. “So are you, jerk,” she scoffs, striding off towards the tide pools. Katsuki follows, if only because he’s tired of getting smacked by the waves. 

He focuses on his footing, on the foaming water between the rocks, on anything except for Toph. Slowly, _slowly_ , his heartbeat settles down enough for him to not hear it rushing in his ears. Now would be a good time to leave, and forget this ever happened, but—Katsuki can’t. Somehow, he knows he’d be losing to her if he left the tide pools first. 

“What school are you in?” Toph asks over her shoulder. It’s such a normal, cordial question, Katsuki is thrown by it. 

“Aldera Junior High. First year,” Katsuki grumbles.

“I go to Okubo,” Toph comments. “First year.” 

“You’re pretty short for a thirteen year old,” he notes, unable to resist.

“Aw, shut up,” she kicks sand at his legs but doesn’t try to deny it. “You’re not much taller than me!”

“I’m still growing,” Katsuki points out blithely. “It’s biology. You’re a girl, so you’re almost at your adult height. After that you’re just gonna grow in width.”

She whips around, eyes wide with outrage. “You’re an ass,” she exclaims, cheeks flooding with color, walking backwards over the rocks. “You think I’m gonna get _fat!”_

“You said it, not me,” Katsuki grins with all his teeth, watching her blush. He made her blush (and he doesn’t care if it’s because he insulted her, she’s not fat anyway). “I bet you’ll—ah!“ he yelps and loses his footing on a algae-covered rock, slipping sideways—

Toph lashes out and catches him, kind of, but his weight pulls her down too and they fall in half-steps, trying to avoid sharp rocks and fumbling into a pile of limbs against rough barnacles and slimy seaweed. 

“Shit,” Katsuki bites out, feeling the scrape of rocks against his leg. “Ow, ow—you— _stupid—“_

Oh, but it’s not the rocks that alarm him, but Toph, plastered against him again, warm and soft. She lifts her cheek from where it’s landed against his chest, and he sees, quite plainly, that this whole fiasco is mortifying for her too. 

“I-I’m, um, sorry—“ she braces a hand against the rocks, pushing herself up. There’s no hiding the fire-red glow of her face, though. “I-It’s slippery,” she says lamely, swiping at her bangs as she gets up.

“No shit,” Katsuki growls back, and if his voice is an octave higher, Toph doesn’t point it out. “I don’t need your _help,”_ he adds for good measure.

“Yeah,” she says distractedly, not even trying to taunt him. 

He decides not to bait her again, rising to his feet carefully. But he does wonder, privately, at how _red_ she is. 

_Still_ is. 

Katsuki doesn’t talk to girls much, not nearly as thrilled with the thought of having a girlfriend as some of his classmates are. But girls don’t _blush_ like this around him either. He doesn’t try, but they don’t approach him, so Katsuki dismisses the whole idea. 

Girlfriends, romance, love—he doesn't bother with it. He has higher goals for himself. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t kissed anyone, or that some idiotic guy in his homeroom class already got his first girlfriend—that stuff is meaningless anyway. 

Except it’s not _meaningless_. The flush of pink on this girl’s face isn’t _meaningless_. It’s different, and unfamiliar, and unimportant—

But it does mean _something_. Or it could.

...Katsuki needles her again.

“What’re you blushing for, Earth Girl?” He nags, even as she shows her back to him as they hop up to higher ground. “Something on your mind?”

Her shoulders rise up, rigid and mechanical in their movements, but she doesn’t answer. 

“You don’t need to say anything, you’re an open book,” he declares, his lips curling into a smirk. “I didn’t need any help, but you’ll take any excuse to _touch_ , eh?”

This time, she twists around to snarl at him, blushing furiously. “What’re you implying?” She snaps.

“You know what,” he taunts. If he’s red-faced too, if his eyes are glued to every curve and dip of bare skin, well, no one can prove a thing. If he’s goading her just to see if how far he can push, no one’s around to stop him. “It’s so _obvious_ , Earth Girl. I almost feel bad for you.”

Her eyes flash with annoyance, and they come to a stop on the rocky shore, near a storm drain pipe trickling with clear rain water. 

“You’ve got some tells, too,” she claims, hands curling into stubborn fists. “I can tell you’re nervous, your heart rate picked up after I took off my shirt—and it’s _still_ going too fast, Katsuki Bakugou.”

Why the fuck would she know about his damn heartbeat? What kind of bullshit extra sense was that? “Tch,” Katsuki’s lip curls in disdain. “I slipped on the rocks, it’s adrenaline.”

“I wonder what _else_ causes adrenaline?” She challenges, stepping closer, a bright spot of red over each cheek. She’s _pretty_. 

She’s _pretty_ , and too shrewd for him to actually provoke, so—

He balances one foot on the same rock she’s on and lurches forward, kissing _her_ before she wises up and tries to kiss _him_. 

She’s startled, but isn't scared off—their lips bump awkwardly before he finds the right angle for it, the right way to move, but then it’s gentle and soft and _not bad at all_. He steadies a hand at her elbow, and her other arm balances against his shoulder. And they kiss, and it’s nice, good, _great_ —

Katsuki pulls away, overwhelmed already. 

Toph’s eyes flutter open, wide and astonished. “I—you—“ she stutters, hand still braced on his shoulder. “I just _met_ you,” she hisses.

Yeah, that about sums up his thoughts too. 

Katsuki pushes away carefully, finding his balance without her. “You wanted to,” he points out, trying to sound smug when he’s all but breathless. “So why not?”

 _“You_ wanted to,” Toph throws back at him, touching a hand to her lips like she isn't sure what just happened. “I’ve _never_ —I didn’t—“

Her expression is open and awed and so easy to read. It was her first kiss too, and she _liked it._ Katsuki’s grin is relentless in the wake of this revelation. 

“What, you want a do-over?” He teases, feeling light as air. She was totally into him. 

“You’re nuts,” she says harshly, teetering forward already to catch his shoulders. Their lips meet again with stubborn force, and all he knows is her saltwater-sunscreen scent, her cool hands on his shoulders, the damp skin at her waist and the wet touch of her mouth. 

And they both pull away this time, too soon and too late, still buzzing with eagerness. 

“Nuts,” she repeats, but she might be talking about herself. “This—this _never happened,”_ she declares, leaning back. 

“Sure it didn’t,” he drawls, grinning madly. 

“It did _not,”_ she emphasizes again, cheeks glowing. “I mean, I don’t even know you— _you!_ Do you even _remember_ my name? You keep calling me Earth Girl!”

“Toph,” Katsuki answers on an exhale, almost a laugh. “You go to Okubo, you wear a fuck-ton of sunscreen, and your quirk ain’t as cool as mine. What else is there to know?”

“Fuck you,” she giggles, not meaning it at all. “You’re thirteen, your explosions don’t work with wet hands, and—“ Here she pauses in consideration. “And I bet you’re gonna take the UA entrance exam in two years?”

Her sudden question dissolves the rest of his smugness, and Katsuki refocuses on her, a new curiosity settling in his gut. The UA exam, eh? Earth Girl was full of surprises.

“Wrong,” he grins, wolfish. “Everyone takes the entrance exam. I’m going to _pass_ it.”

She beams back, but there’s an edge of tension to it now. “I’ll see you there,” she vows, deadly serious. “I wanna fight that Explosion quirk for _real._ And only hero students are allowed to go all-out.” 

Toph was already kind of pretty when he first laid eyes on her, but now she’s splendid in the afternoon light, blazing with promise and fire. 

“As _if,”_ he scoffs. “Who’s gonna let a _poor little blind girl_ into the top hero school?”

“Who’s gonna let a hotheaded maniac like you into _any_ hero school?” She goads him right back.

And there’s a sting to that insult she wouldn't understand, that Katsuki barely understands for himself. Anyone else who said would mean it like a barb, but Toph is—playful, even now, in spite of it all. 

“Guess we’ll find out in two years,” Katsuki mutters, taking another step back. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. Still blushing, still buzzing—he could kiss her again, if he felt inclined to, and she would kiss back—Toph steps aside, back towards the first tide pool. “I wish it were sooner, you know?” She ventures, looking wistful. “Or that there was some easier way to prepare for hero stuff. I get that there’s laws about minors, but still.”

“The minor laws are dumb as shit,” Katsuki affirms, trailing her steps up the rocks. Her feet always seem to find the best placement, and he assumes it’s from her sensory ability. “People harp on about restricting quirk usage, not letting us even practice during gym period, and then hero schools contradict all the rules.” 

“Exactly! Look at UA—their motto. Plus Ultra, Go Beyond. But if we followed all the quirk guidelines, and never used any powers in public, then it’s like stretching a muscle after letting it atrophy for ten years...”

He marvels at how thoroughly she bulldozes the path for conversation, cheerfully ignoring the kiss(es). And it’s not like Katsuki has any intention of bringing it up. 

There’s no need for discussion. He goes to Aldera and she goes to Okubo. He doesn’t want anything more with her—not now, not here, because Katsuki hardly knows her well enough to want her or anyone as a _girlfriend_. And if they’re anything alike—as Katsuki knows they are, he _knows it—_ Toph won’t want a thing from him either. 

“—and all I can do is learn at a dojo, which is awesome for chokeholds but not for punching through rocks like I _want_ to...”

And to be honest, Katsuki wants to know more about that arm hold she used on him. “That was a lucky move. I was going easy on you ‘cause you’re smaller than me,” he butts in. 

“You’re a bad liar,” she chuckles, punching him in the arm at just the right moment to make him stagger into puddled seaweed. “I _always_ make the right move!”

He whacks her shoulder lightly, open-palmed, and she yelps in pain. “Wimp,” he declares, “See? There was no force behind that and you’re _still_ whining.”

“That’s because I have a _sunburn_ there!” She bellows, rubbing at her raw shoulder. 

“What sunburn?”

“Asshole! Don’t try to gaslight me, I know what you’re doing…”

They pick their way through the rocks and leave the kiss behind, choosing to only bring along their talks of quirks, heroes, and dreams.

* * *

Two and a half years later, Toph Beifong waltzes into Class 1-A. Katsuki, already in his seat and growling at some private school extra, see her and can’t help but _grin._ He doesn’t notice, but it spooks Tenya Iida more than any words could have.

”Oi, oi, Earth Girl,” he calls out, delighted when she freezes where she stands, recognizing his voice. “Ready for a rematch?”

She grins back, eyes alight. Then she blinks, and steps closer to some red-and-white haired kid. “Mm, sorry, who’re you?” Toph simpers, clutching at the straps of her backpack. “Have we met before?”

Katsuki’s eyes blaze. “Oh, you’re _dead.”_

The kid next to her looks alarmed—Katsuki completely misses the green-haired nerd that shuffles in behind them—

Toph cackles, bright and free. “You’re on, _Bomb Boy.”_

A pause.

”I—! _Bomb Boy?_ I’ll kill you—!”


End file.
